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Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

This year has brought numerous stories of large Internet companies using their dominance of key Internet functions in ways that harm users and shut out competitors. From Google’s treatment of competing search companies in its results, to Facebook’s playing favorites with its developer APIs, to AT&T and Comcast’s ...

Throughout 2018, new surveillance practices continued to erode the privacy of people in Latin America. Yet local and regional digital rights organizations continue to push back with strategic litigation, journalists and security researchers investigate to shed light on government use of malware, and local activists work tirelessly to fight overarching...

One of the most important principles underpinning the Internet is that if you say something illegal, you should be held responsible for it—not the owners of the site or service where you said it. That principle has seen many threats this year—not just in federal legislation, but also in...

We saw 2017 tip the scales for HTTPS. In 2018, web encryption continues to improve. EFF has begun to shift its focus towards email security, and the security community is shifting its focus towards further hardening TLS, the protocol that drives encryption on the Internet. By default, all Internet...

EFF fought FOSTA in 2018. We fought the bill in Congress and, when the president signed it into law, immediately set our sights on challenging it in court. The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865) was ostensibly passed to fight sex...

To the extent that 260-page regulations can ever be said to be “famous,” Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) certainly had its moment in limelight in 2018. When it came into force on May 25, it was heralded by a flurry of emails from tech companies, desperate to re-establish their...

This wasn’t a great year for those of us whose job it is to defend the use of encryption. In the United States, we heard law enforcement officials go on about the same “going dark” problem they’ve been citing since the late 90s, but even after all these years...

States are often the “laboratories of democracy,” to borrow a phrase from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. They lead the way to react quickly to technological advances, establish important rights, and sometimes pass laws that serve as a template for others across the country. This year, EFF worked—and fought—alongside...

In 2018, we learned that expanded biometric surveillance is coming to an airport near you. This includes face recognition, iris scans, and fingerprints. And government agencies aren’t saying anything about how they will protect this highly sensitive information. This fall, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published their Biometrics...

This year, we refocused our attention on Offline, our project that seeks to raise awareness of and provide actions readers can take to support imprisoned bloggers, digital activists, and technologists. Originally launched in 2015, Offline currently features six individuals from four countries whose critical voices have been silenced by...

Open access is the common-sense idea that scientific research (especially scientific research funded by the government or philanthropic foundations) should be available to the public—ideally with no legal or technical barriers to access and reuse. EFF is a longtime supporter of the open access movement: we think that promoting broad...

In an era where political and corporate leaders are attacking the free press as “the enemy of the people,” it’s crucial that we recognize the truth: journalists every day are uncovering stories that protect our rights and hold those in power accountable. Meanwhile, as the media landscape shrinks, non-profits are...

2018 marked the launch of EFF's new logo, nicknamed “Insider”—the first new logo we’ve had since EFF’s founding in 1990!The logo is the result of approximately a year of development. In 2017, EFF received a generous offer of a pro bono logo and identity design from...

The digital rights movement showed its strength this year by projecting influence in jurisdictions across the United States. Community organizations on both coasts, as well as the Midwest and the South, took action, promoting issues from net neutrality and civilian oversight of local police surveillance to the right to repair...